


It Goes so Fast

by Hecate



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Gen, Ignoring Comic Books Canon, Possession, Sibling Love, Siblings, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 00:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8422939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: Dawn is young, and the world is her oyster. That's how the saying goes, doesn't it?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [May](https://archiveofourown.org/users/May/gifts).



  
_“Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0 “_  
\- Faith Lehane

~*~

Dawn is 18, and the world is a bright and sharp thing all around her. It is all danger and possibilities, all of it somehow more real than it used to be. And sometimes, when she steps into it, she feels as if its every single part is echoing though her.

Dawn is 18, and she doesn't count the apocalypses that didn't kill her, doesn't count the days she has been real. Instead, she studies to be a Watcher and she watches over her sister, and people tell her she has a tendency to be too serious.

She wants to laugh at them. And yet, she never does.

She reads more instead, and she learns what she can from Willow, and she promises herself that she will only ever become lost in words and never in power. Sometimes, with a beer in her hand and as maudlin as Sunnydale taught her to be, she wonders if it was a promise too hard to keep.

She called her mother back to the living, after all. She stretched herself so very close to the dead, and stopping just before her mom walked back into her life doesn't take that away. 

Dawn is 19, and she wonders if she could still go to college, play normal for a bit just like her sister did. But it never quite worked out right for Buffy, and Dawn doesn't believe she could be a Watcher and a student at the same time. And she never trusted anyone else but Giles with Buffy. But Giles is growing old.

“You should go,” her sister tells her, “you should know more than this.”

“Our life?” she asks.

Buffy nods. “Yes. There is so much out there.”

Dawn laughs, says, “How would you even know?” And she pretends not to see how hurt Buffy is by her words.

Dawn is 20, and she breaks her arm in a car accident. It's dumb, it's silly, and Buffy looks so terrified at the hospital.

“I could have lost you,” her big sister says.

Dawn bites her lip, doesn't remind Buffy that Dawn actually lost her, that she was gone, and Dawn had been alone with her sister's broken friends and a robot who should never have fooled anyone.

“I'm okay,” she says instead, and smiles. “Showering will simply suck for a while.”

“I can help you,” Buffy says, and it's so awkwardly and weirdly Buffy.

Dawn is 20, and she can't wash her hair by herself or cook for weeks. She tries not to be resentful with the world. It has done so much worse to her, it would be stupid to get pissed over a car accident.

The insurance is paying for a new car, after all.

Dawn is 21, and her sister is buying her the first legal drink of her life. It's a Cosmo, and Dawn kind of hates Buffy for her choice. She has always been a Death in the Afternoon kind of girl. Not that she would ever tell Buffy that. And anyway, it is alcohol, it is her birthday, and things are good right now. She can deal with a Cosmo

Dawn is 21, and she says, “I think I want to go to college.” 

She didn't want to say that, didn't want to blurt out half plans and vague ideas. But she is a little less serious than she used to be and a little bit more hopeful. She is starting to think that there is time enough to finish a degree, to learn more than what needs to be known to save the world from vampires and all the other assorted monsters. 

Maybe she can learn how to save something smaller for a change.

On the other side of the table, Buffy raises her glass and smiles.

Dawn is 22, and the days seem to vanish into thin air and drawn-out study sessions. 

“So this is what you meant by all the stuff that is out there,” she says to her sister, pointing at a couple of text books. “Expensive books and back pain.”

Buffy laughs, leafing through the pages. “Isn't all of this online nowadays?”

“Ha,” Dawn replies. “Also, hahaha.”

Buffy punches her shoulder lightly. “Let’s go out tonight. I buy you a beer, you tell me about classes, I tell you all the details about punching that green, slimey thing yesterday night.”

Dawn laughs for real then, shuddering a bit, too. “Yeah, sounds great.”

Later, she clinks her beer bottle to her sister's and thinks that this right here might be normal, the two of them and all their stories.

“I love you,” she says, “you slime hugger.”

Buffy nods, her face the kind of serious that hides a grin. “Love you too, you over-hyped light-bulb.”

Dawn is 23, and something is wrong with her sister.

“You are not right,” Buffy tells her, face sharp, her body tense. “You shouldn't be here.”

And her words are a punch, are a knife wound, are years unravelling until she is Dawnie again and the crazy people of Sunnydale see the key instead of the girl. It still hurts like it used to.

“Buffy?” Dawn asks, stepping closer to her sister though her instincts and her training pull her away. But that is her sister standing in front of her, and Dawn knows her. “What is happening?”

Her sister stares at her, and Dawn thinks of snakes and tigers and demons, and she swallows against the fear uncurling inside of her body, tries to force it down again. It has no space here, not between her and Buffy, and she won't let it stretch into something real.

So she takes another step.

“Hey,” Dawn says, and she smiles, “did some witch throw something nasty at you again?” And she tries to think of a joke, of something stupid to say about witches and bitches and sisters, something Willow would frown at her for.

Dawn doesn't get to make that comment.

Buffy is on her, and she is so fast and so strong, and Dawn knows that she has no chance, not against the Slayer. She tries to fight her off anyway, because it's Buffy and she would never be able to live with herself if anything happened to Dawn, if she let something happen to her little sister.

The idea scares her more than Buffy's fingers digging into her throat, and for a moment she breaks free of her sister's hold, for a moment she can breathe. It doesn't last for long.

Dawn is 23 and she's going, she's going, and she's gone.

Dawn was 23.


End file.
